


Paint Me A Picture

by SingingInTheRaiin



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: (not between the Doctor and Rose), Abusive Relationship, Artist Rose Tyler, F/M, Gen, Jackie is a good mother, Seeing the future, Time Travel, Weddings, as opposed to the other kind of nightmares, nightmares about things that haven't happened yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2019-10-13
Packaged: 2020-12-14 05:51:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21010793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SingingInTheRaiin/pseuds/SingingInTheRaiin
Summary: "The first time Rose had made a ‘grown up’ painting, she’d been four years old. She worked through most of the night, knowing that she needed to get every piece of the image absolutely perfect. Three months later, Jackie had had her eyes glued to the news as they talked about a plane crash that had tragically occurred. Jackie let out a loud gasp, and pressed her hand to her mouth as she slowly turned to look back at Rose’s picture."From a very young age, Rose Tyler has had the ability to glimpse the future, and then draw what she sees. Will that be enough to change what's already been written about her future with the Doctor, though?





	Paint Me A Picture

The first time Rose had made a ‘grown up’ painting, she’d been four years old. Before that, she’d stuck with the usual fingerpainting that most children used, but her mother had gotten a new boyfriend who was an artist, and he had left a lot of his supplies lying around their flat. Jackie said that it was okay because ‘he might be the one’ (something that quickly turned out to not be the case), and Rose didn’t mind.

One night, she’d woken up from a very strange dream, and she’d needed some way to express what she’d seen, so she grabbed the paints and a piece of paper and got to work. She worked through most of the night, knowing that she needed to get every piece of the image absolutely perfect.

When Jackie got up the next morning, she thought that Rose must have grabbed a finished piece from her boyfriend, but he said he’d never painted such a thing before. Rose proudly declared the work to be hers, and then Jackie had spent weeks telling everyone who would listen that her daughter was a prodigy. 

Three months later, Jackie had had her eyes glued to the news as they talked about a plane crash that had tragically occurred. When she got up to answer the phone, eager to talk about the news with her friends, Jackie’s eyes landed on the picture held on the fridge by magnets. She glanced back at the telly just as they showed a picture taken from a different angle than the previous ones, apparently by some amateur photographer. 

The slightly out of focus picture showed only the smallest glimpse of the plane itself. Mostly it was just a hill with a lot of smoke and fire rising up over it. Jackie let out a loud gasp, and pressed her hand to her mouth as she slowly turned to look back at Rose’s picture. Jackie had just assumed that the smoke in it belonged to a bonfire or something, but now she could see that it was identical to the picture shown on the news, even down to the slight blur. The only difference was the smudgey, messy signature that Rose had put in the bottom corner after Jackie’s ex had told her to. 

Jackie got rid of the remaining art supplies from their flat, and she didn’t brag about Rose’s painting to anyone else.

,,,

Rose woke up one night screaming like she was being murdered, and Jackie jolted upright, and ran into her daughter’s room. Rose was completely inconsolable, and Jackie didn’t know what to do. Finally, she found a piece of printer paper and a pen and handed them over, and watched with amazement as Rose immediately started drawing. 

Jackie just sat there and watched as Rose worked, face scrunched up in intense concentration. The little girl was hunched over so far that it was difficult to see the paper, so Jackie just watched the girl. When Rose was finally done, she held up the finished product, and Jackie choked back a sob. It showed Jackie and Pete getting married, though they were wearing different clothes than they had back then, and Jackie couldn’t help noticing that she and Pete both looked much older than they had at their wedding, and Jackie looked even older than she looked now. 

Once she got over her shock, she gave Rose a proud little smile. “Most adults wouldn’t even be able to use that kind of detail,” she explained. “But why did you draw this?” 

Rose shrugged, and then let out a big yawn. “I needed to,” she said simply, as if that explained everything.

Jackie had no idea what was going on, but she leaned over to kiss Rose’s forehead, and then pulled the blankets up to tuck her little girl back in. “Try to get some sleep, darling.” She took the picture with her as she left the room, studying it intently. The church in the picture was also different than the one she’d gotten married in, and she couldn’t help thinking for a moment of Rose’s picture of the plane crash. But no, she was just being silly. Little girls couldn’t paint the future, and Pete was dead, and she’d already married him years ago, so what reason could they have for getting married again?

All the same, Jackie found the folder she’d stored Rose’s other picture in, and slipped the wedding in over it. They were just drawings, nothing more. And maybe if Jackie kept telling herself that, she might actually start to believe it. 

,,,

Rose was still in grade school when Jackie was called in for the first time. Apparently Rose had drawn a picture of one of the teachers falling over, and at first everyone had been awed by the talent that Rose clearly showed, but then the teacher had actually fallen over, in the same spot Rose depicted, and now the teacher suspected that Rose had somehow tripped him on purpose. There was no other way for the situation to make any sense. 

For just the briefest moment, Jackie thought about telling the teacher about the plane crash, but them immediately knew that that would be a terrible idea. They would just call Jackie crazy and take Rose away from her, and she absolutely couldn’t allow that to happen. So even though it maddened her to hear her precious daughter called a ‘bad seed’, and someone with clear ‘behavioral issues’, Jackie just sat there and said nothing in Rose’s defense. Strangely enough, Rose didn’t even try to defend herself.

Later, as she brought Rose home, Rose looked up at her apologetically. “I didn’t mean to make him fall,” she said in a small voice.

Jackie paused in the middle of shrugging off her jacket. “So you did trip him?”

Rose immediately shook her head. “No! But I drew it. I shouldn’t have, but I did. Sometimes when I draw stuff, it happens for real, but I just can’t stop myself.”

Jackie wondered how it had never occurred to her sooner that Rose drew things she didn’t share. “So you’re saying that when you draw things you’re making them happen?”

Rose shrugged. “I guess so.”

Perhaps to a young mind, that idea made as much sense as anything else. Didn’t Jackie read in a magazine somewhere that children found it difficult to think of the world as something beyond just the sphere that they existed in? “Maybe you draw them because they were going to happen anyways,” Jackie suggested. She couldn’t think for even a second that her sweet, compassionate daughter would ever intentionally cause a plane to crash (and she wasn’t even going to start thinking about when she’d started believing it was possible for a person to have that kind of power anyways). She turned and crouched down so that she could look Rose in the eyes. “Honey, I think we need to talk about your drawings. Can you tell the difference between regular ones and ‘special’ ones?” Rose slowly nodded, and Jackie smiled encouragingly. “That’s because you’re so clever,” she started, until she remembered that there was supposed to be a purpose to this conversation. “Rose, darling, I need you to promise me that you will never show anyone your special drawings. You can show them to me if you want, but no one else, ever. Please promise me that.”

Rose gave Jackie a long look, and Jackie couldn’t help thinking that the little girl had the eyes of someone much older. Jackie wondered what other kinds of things Rose had seen and drawn, but then decided that maybe she didn’t actually want to know. “I promise,” Rose said quietly. Then she leaned forward to give Jackie a hug, which Jackie immediately returned. Her daughter was clearly special, and Jackie knew that the kind of world they lived in wasn’t one that cared much for special people.

,,,

Rose had two separate sketchbooks. One contained her ‘special’ drawings, and one held her ordinary sketches, which were safe to show off to other people. Over the years, Rose had taken to including articles or photographs or anything else that matched her drawings. The events predicted by her drawings always happened various amounts of time after she’d drawn them, anywhere from a few hours to years. Most of them still hadn’t come true yet, but Rose knew they would, because those were the ones she’d ‘seen’. 

Maybe it would have been just as effective to write about the things she saw, but Rose liked making art, and it seemed easier to figure out the matches to real events when she could see exactly what she was looking for. And even though it could be a pain sometimes, since she couldn’t start a special drawing without finishing it in the same sitting, they didn’t come to her often enough to really be that big of a deal.

When Rose first met Jimmy Stone, she thought that he was just about the greatest person to ever walk the Earth, despite all of her mother’s warnings to the contrary. For the first time in her life, Rose wondered if it was possible for her to see something at will, rather than waiting for random images to hit her. 

She sat down cross-legged on her bed, and focused everything she had on Jimmy. If she could just draw a lovely picture of their future, then Jackie would leave Rose alone, because Jackie fully believed that Rose could draw the future sometimes. But no matter how much she concentrated, nothing happened.

A few days later, Jimmy said he wanted to take Rose on tour with him and his band, which would mean her dropping out of school. Rose knew her mother would never agree to such a thing, at least not without proof that it would turn out alright. So even though she felt guilty for doing so, Rose painted a picture of her and Jimmy getting married, joyous looks on both their faces, and Jackie crying in the front row of pews. 

Once the painting was finished, Rose showed it to Jackie, and then shared Jimmy’s plans. Jackie was stubborn, and still seemed to think that there was something wrong with Jimmy (even though he was pretty much perfect), but the happiness on Rose’s face in the painting seemed to convince her. Rose felt sick to her stomach about lying to her mother, who was probably the only person in the world who would ever believe Rose’s ability, but tried to justify it to herself. Even if it wouldn’t look exactly like the painting, Rose still knew that that moment was in her future. She didn’t need to see it in advance to know.

,,,

Most of the time they were on the road, Jimmy seemed to forget that Rose even existed, and he spent a lot of time with other girls who called themselves ‘groupies’. And when he did seem to miraculously remember her, it was always while she was busy doing something else. 

One night, Jimmy still hadn’t returned to the van they were living out of even though it was very late, and Rose suddenly needed to draw, for the first time in what felt like a while. She tried to ignore the image that popped into her mind, but she scrounged around for paper and a pen. All she could find was the back of one of Jimmy’s flyers, but it would have to do.

She drew what had been in her mind, even as she dreaded seeing it in ink. When she was done, she looked down at the image that she had seen in her head. It showed Jimmy scowling at her, and an impressive bruise across one of her cheeks. Rose crumbled the flyer up into a ball, and tossed it away, trying to convince herself that it had just been a regular drawing. Nothing special about it at all. She tried to tell herself that it didn’t show the future.

,,,

But it did.

,,,

It was very rare that Rose’s pictures gave any indication of when they were going to happen. In fact, it was so rare that it had never happened before. But the picture she’d drawn had been of the top half of a newspaper, with the headline about Henrik’s burning down. And because it was a newspaper, she could see the date right on it, and it was only three days away.

Was this some kind of sign that she wasn’t supposed to go in to work that day? But how could she get out of it, when she’d already probably called out too many times since getting her job there? Then again, from what the article under the headline said, the building wouldn’t go up in flames until after the workday was over, so maybe everything would be okay?

Rose didn’t bother showing her mum the picture, because she didn’t want Jackie to get worried. As long as Rose headed home right at the end of the day, there shouldn’t be any problems, right? 

The day went on the same as it always did, with a quick lunch break in the middle where she sat outside by herself, and then time seemed to move quite quickly, and it was the end of the day. Rose kept checking the time, wanting to make sure everyone else was out of the building as well. 

But just as she thought she was in the clear, she was being sent down to the basement to drop off money, and she would have outright refused if it weren’t for the fact that it meant Wilson was still in the building too, and she needed to make sure he got out of there. She hurried down to his office, but he wasn’t in there, and Rose had to refrain from letting out a loud groan of frustration. 

The next few minutes passed by in a bit of a blur, as she was surrounded by moving mannequins, and then someone grabbed her hand and told her to run, so she did. Once they were safe in the elevator, Rose stared at the man in surprise. This moment wasn’t one she’d ever drawn, but the man himself was the subject of two different works. 

There were a million things she probably should have asked (not the least of which being about the plastic arm that had just been removed from what had seemed to be a living being), but the first thing she thought to ask was, “Are you an alien?” In both of her pictures of this man, he was with creatures that didn’t look like they could possibly come from this planet. 

The man stared at her. “What?”

“Sorry, I know that’s probably a strange question to ask a complete stranger.” She cleared her throat, feeling awkward. “So who were they, then? More aliens?”

The man’s eyes seemed to narrow at her more with each word she said, until he was basically just squinting at her. “Who are you?”

Rose shrugged one shoulder. “Just a shopgirl.” And it was the truth, so there was no reason for the man to keep looking at her suspiciously. She couldn’t help being open minded to the idea of there being other people and worlds out there. Not only could she see the future sometimes, but the things that she saw were occasionally very clearly not of Earthly origin. 

The man stared at her for a very long moment, and then somehow the conversation got to a point where he revealed that Wilson was dead, and Rose felt a pang of guilt in her chest at not being able to save him, even if he hadn’t died in the fire. Speaking of which, she tuned in to hear the man speak of living plastic, which was believable enough considering the circumstances, and also he had a bomb. “So, I'm going to go up there and blow them up, and I might well die in the process, but don't worry about me. No, you go home. Go on. Go and have your lovely beans on toast. Don't tell anyone about this, because if you do, you'll get them killed.”

Rose’s eyes widened. “So it’s your fault!”

He paused right before slamming the door shut. “Excuse me?”

Rose remembered promising her mum that she would never share her gift with anyone, and even if this guy was an alien, Rose wasn’t going to break that promise. “Er, nothing, sorry.”

He did close the door, but then opened it again a moment later. “I’m the Doctor, by the way. What’s your name?”

“Rose.” Normally she wouldn’t give her name to a stranger, but something about him seemed trustworthy, which was a strange thought for Rose, considering how her trust had been abused by others in the past. 

He grinned. “Nice to meet you, Rose. Run for your life!”

Rose ran, but jumped in surprise at the sound of an explosion behind her. She glanced back and saw the entire top floor of Henrik’s engulfed in a ball of fire, and then she forced herself to keep moving. She almost ran past a police box parked in the alley between two stores, but she came to an abrupt halt and backtracked to look at it again. Just off the top of her head, she could think of at least seven different drawings she’d made that included this box in it.

She reached out to pull at one of the door handles, just like the sign on the door implied she should, but it remained firmly stuck in place, so Rose decided to wait. She wasn’t sure what she was waiting for exactly, but she knew that it was important, and she was pretty sure she’d regret leaving now. 

It was only a few minutes before the Doctor ran into the alley, face grim, but he paused when he saw the way Rose was just casually leaning up against the police box, arms crossed over her chest. He raised one eyebrow, and she gave him a small smile. “You just blew up my job.”

The Doctor blinked at her a couple of times before he answered. “Yes, well, it was to save you stupid apes, so you’re welcome.” He took a few steps closer to Rose, and she could see that despite the indifferent look on his face, his eyes were shining with curiosity. “Who are you?”

“I’d say just a shopgirl, but I don’t think I am anymore,” she said with a small laugh as she nodded towards the remains of Henrik’s.” Then she was suddenly struck with inspiration, or a vision, or whatever it should be called when she saw the future. “Do you have some paper and a pencil?” she asked on impulse. She remembered her promise to her mum, but she could also tell that alien or not, there was something different about the Doctor. 

The Doctor stared at her even as he patted down his pockets, and ended up pulling out a yellow pad that definitely should not have fit. He pulled out a pen after another moment, and it was one of those fancy, expensive looking ones, though the writing on the side of it wasn’t in any language Rose had ever seen before.

She thanked him, then flipped open the pad and quickly got to work. If she had some way of controlling it better, she would skip over some of the fine details just to show the gist of the image she’d seen, but it never seemed to work like that. If she wanted to translate the future onto paper, then she had to show all of it.

Surprisingly, the Doctor just stood there patiently and waited for Rose to finish. She wasn’t sure how much time passed, but when she was done, she tore off the top sheet of paper and handed it over to the Doctor. He took it with some obvious bemusement, and continued to stare at her for a few long seconds before his eyes finally flicked down to the paper.

His reaction was immediate. “Where did you see this?” he asked in a shaky voice. 

Rose had drawn a house tucked away just at the base of several large mountains. There were rose-like flowers scattered all around, and there was a tiny face peering out from one of the front windows of the house. “Sometimes I see things, and sometimes they happen for real, after I already drew them.”

She could see the way the paper fluttered slightly when the Doctor’s hand shook. “But that’s impossible. This place is gone, forever. And humans can’t see the future. Who are you, really?”

Rose shrugged. “I may have something of a unique talent, but I’m still just an ordinary girl. Now, who are you? And what’s the police box for?”

,,,

Neither of them seemed satisfied with the answers that they got, but in the end, they saved the day by working together. Well, Rose liked to maintain that she had totally saved the Doctor’s butt, and that he would have been useless without her help. He agreed with a laugh, though Rose got the feeling that he meant it more than she had.

And then he offered to take her all across the universe. It was a scary thought, to head out into the unknown, but if the universe could show her anything like what she’d seen in her own visions of the future, then how could she possibly refuse? For as long as she’d been able to draw them, Rose had wanted to see the stars.

,,,

At first, the Doctor had only invited Rose to travel with him because she was something of a mystery, and trying to solve her was enough to take his mind off of the war. But he quickly realized that she was so much more than just a curiosity. There was something special about her, without a doubt. And she managed to constantly save him, from more than just alien threats. 

He never stopped carrying around the drawing she’d given him the first day they’d met, but he also didn’t worry quite so much about how it was possible for it to even exist. No matter how many times he’d asked her, Rose had never said more than she had when she’d given it to them. That sometimes she could see the future. 

The Doctor had seen a great many things in his long life that a lot of people would consider to be impossible, but it wasn’t beyond the realm of known possibilities for there to be a human with some slightly psychic tendencies. What didn’t make sense, though, was that she claimed to be able to see the future, but she had clearly drawn a picture that took place on Gallifrey, which was a place that could never possibly have a future again. Because of him. Rose didn’t seem to understand the significance of what she’d drawn, though, and the Doctor couldn’t tell her, because then he’d have to explain how he knew that there was no future for his home planet. And being with Rose felt so… right, he couldn’t bear the idea of her leaving once she found out what kind of man he was.

,,,

Time Lords didn’t need to get nearly as much sleep as humans, and the Doctor often found himself grumbling about Rose constantly wasting away so many hours of her life. She usually just rolled her eyes, or occasionally gave him a light punch to the shoulder. The Doctor didn’t stop saying it, though, because sometimes, she would respond with a brilliant, teasing grin, and the Doctor would feel utterly lost to it.

The first time that he was truly upset by how much Rose needed to sleep was when the TARDIS had started setting off alarms to let the Doctor know that something was wrong, and he followed the flashing lights to Rose’s room. He hesitated outside the door for a moment, not wanting to invade her privacy, but the ship seemed insistent that there was a problem.

As soon as he’d pushed the door open (which was strangely made out of wood), he could hear Rose screaming, and he ran over to her. His thoughts immediately went to how a danger could have gotten into her room. He did have a few potentially dangerous odds and ends stored on the ship, though he was sure that the TARDIS was very fond of Rose (in fact, his ship seemed to like Rose more than anyone else who’d ever been onboard- including him!) and wouldn’t expose her to threats.

Then he realized that she was just thrashing around under tangled up blankets, eyes still closed, and he knew she was having a nightmare. Time Lords may not have much need of sleep, but the Doctor was no stranger to nightmares. He gently shook Rose’s shoulders until her eyes fluttered open, and she looked around dazedly before lurching upright and grabbing a sketchbook and pen off of her bedside table. 

She completely ignored the Doctor as she made rushed lines over the paper, and he sank down onto the edge of her bed. They both sat there for nearly an hour before she finally tossed the pen aside, and slammed the book shut. The Doctor had only been able to catch a few small glimpses because of the way her hair had curtained around the page, but he couldn’t help feeling curious. After that first time, he’d never actually seen Rose make another drawing, not even a normal one. “Want to talk about it?” he asked in a gruff voice. Usually he wasn’t one to share his own feelings and such, but Rose had always been much more open than him. 

Rose gave him a long look, then shook her head. There were dark bags under her eyes, and she looked exhausted. The Doctor hoped that the TARDIS had brought him as soon as the nightmare became apparent, but he also knew that physically flailing around wasn’t the only tiring thing that had just happened. 

She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “I’m good,” she whispered. “Just need to get back to sleep, I think.” Then she grimaced, like the thought of going back to sleep was the worst thing she could think of. “Or maybe some kind of adventure?” 

The Doctor was well aware of how often their innocent adventures turned into sprints, marathons, jogs, and other words for running. It seemed risky to bring her out when she was clearly not in peak condition, especially since Rose seemed to be particularly jeopardy friendly compared to some of the Doctor’s past companions. 

So he gave her a big grin and hopped up to his feet. “Rose Tyler- one adventure coming right up! Might want to get changed first. Most aliens aren’t as impressed with your jimjams as I am.”

Rose rolled her eyes, but got to her feet as well. Her current sleep clothes consisted of an overly large tee-shirt that the Doctor had caught from a tee-shirt cannon during a Rnexl concert on Rictorio VI, and a pair of sweatpants. Her hair was a bit of a greasy mess, and she looked tired enough that she’d get swept over by a strong breeze, but the Doctor couldn’t help thinking that she looked lovely- and that’s when he turned abruptly and hurried out of the room.

,,,

When they met Captain Jack Harkness, the Doctor got irrationally annoyed, and didn’t trust the Time Agent to come back for them. Rose just grabbed at the Doctor’s arm, and gave him a big smile. “We can trust him,” she insisted. “Not only did he save my life tonight, but he’s going to save us both someday. He can’t do that unless he comes back for us now.”

The Doctor found it difficult to believe sometimes that Rose could actually see the future, in such clear pictures that no human psychic should be able to see, but she sounded so confident, and in the end, the Doctor knew that he already trusted this one human more than pretty much anything. So he let himself believe in her, and Harkness by proxy, and then Jack did come back for them. 

Months later, when the Doctor grandly threw the TARDIS doors open to show off their next destination, Rose peered out, and then shouted for the Doctor and Jack to wait a moment. She rushed off down one of the hallways, but with the ever-shifting nature of the TARDIS, it was impossible to say for sure where she was actually going. 

She came back a few minutes later, clutching something tightly in one hand. She grabbed Jack’s shoulder to pull him aside, just far enough that the Doctor wouldn’t be able to overhear them with his superior Time Lord senses. She handed him something, and whispered for a moment, and then Jack shoved the thing into his pocket, and the two of them returned to the Doctor’s side to head out with him. 

He figured that they wouldn’t say anything if he were to ask, though he couldn’t deny to himself that he was quite curious what had just happened. There wasn’t much time for curiosity, though, as the three of them got drawn into a plot by someone who wanted to cause a three-way civil war in order to prove that their anti-war faction was in the right. 

At one point, the Doctor and Rose were captured by two different factions, and the Doctor tried to figure out his escape strategy so that he could find Rose. With how securely he was tied up, there was no way for him to reach into his pocket for his sonic. It wasn’t long, though, before Rose and Jack showed up and heroically rescued the Doctor instead. Later, once the situation had been resolved and they were all safe back on the TARDIS, the Doctor had to ask how Jack had done it, and he tossed over the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver.

The Doctor stared at the device in disbelief. “Where did you get this?”

Jack shrugged innocently. “Ask Rosie.”

She just grinned at the Doctor. “I told you he’d save our lives.” And how could the Doctor argue with that?

,,,

‘Bad Wolf’. Two words that seemed to have been following the Doctor around for a while now, or at least since around when he’d started traveling with Rose. And he knew that something about those words seemed to freak Rose out, though she never said anything about them. 

It wasn’t until much later, when he heard the TARDIS returning even after he’d sent her away, that he understood. The doors opened, and Rose stepped out, surrounded by a golden glow that the Doctor normally associated with a Time Lord’s regeneration. She was Bad Wolf, and she scattered her own name so that she could lead herself to this moment. But was she able to become Bad Wolf because she already had a connection to Time, or did she have a connection to Time because she became Bad Wolf? It was something to ponder later.

,,,

Later meant after the Doctor changed into his new face, and Rose woke up. There were tears streaming down her face as she walked over to him. “I was so stupid. I thought I could stop it, even though I’ve never been able to change the future before. But now you’re dying, just like I knew you would.”

There wasn’t enough time to unpack all of that, so the Doctor could only assure Rose that he would only sort of die, because he was going to live on, and he was still going to take her to see all the wonders of the universe that they hadn’t yet seen. And of course, he had to tell her that she’d been fantastic. 

Then he was wearing a new face, though from the expression on Rose’s, it was clear that she’d seen it before, just as she’d seen so many other things before they happened. The sheer relief on her face was enough to calm some of the Doctor’s post-regenerative mania. “Oh thank god it’s you. When I saw you with me and the TARDIS I thought that the Doctor died and I started traveling with some other bloke, but it was just you all along.” She threw her arms around him to pull him in to a tight hug, and the Doctor could only marvel at how quickly she accepted him. Rose Tyler was still an enigma, but he didn’t care so much anymore about solving her. He just wanted to keep her by his side forever.

,,,

With his new body, the Doctor found it easier to open up to Rose in ways he hadn’t been able to before, and to his surprise and delight, she began to open up more to him as well. She told him more about her life, and about how she’d once promised her mum to never tell anyone about her gift, but that something in her had urged her to trust the Doctor from the moment they’d met. 

Sometimes, the things she saw terrified her, because she saw all kinds of visions that seemed to take place all across the universe. She began sharing more drawings with the Doctor, to see if he could identify the creatures of places in them. She also explained to him something strange she’d noticed during their time traveling together- no matter where or when they were, she was pretty sure that she could see the future from that point forward. She said that she’d never seen any visions of the ‘past’ until the first time he’d taken her back in time, and then she’d seen the future relative to when they were. It was quite fascinating. 

But her ability to see the future wasn’t the only thing that interested the Doctor. He also saw how Rose was so brave and kind and compassionate and curious and funny and beautiful and- well. She meant a lot to him. More than he ever would have suspected any one person could. 

,,,

One night (or at least, during the time when the TARDIS dimmed the lights over most of the ship so that Rose could feel as though it were night), the Doctor was in the middle of tinkering with a toaster he’d picked up from a Xretian market when Rose wandered in to the kitchen. He was so caught up in what he was doing that he didn’t even notice she was there until suddenly her arms were wrapped around his waist, and her face was pressed against his back.

The Doctor set down his sonic screwdriver, and turned around so that he could return the embrace. “Is everything alright?” he asked softly.

Rose shook her head, but waited several long seconds before saying anything. “Time is always in flux, right? So anything could happen?”

“I suppose,” the Doctor answered slowly, worry starting to fill his chest. From what he understood of Rose’s gift, her drawings always came true exactly as they were depicted, which had a whole set of interesting implications on its own, but also worried him about why she would ask such a thing. “There are fixed points of course, which can’t be changed. Well, technically they can be, but at the risk of tearing apart the fabric of the universe, which you already know because you saw that happen when you tried to change a fixed point with your father-” he cut himself off when he realized that he was just rambling. “Why do you ask?” 

Rose didn’t move to let go of him, so the Doctor didn’t let go of her either, just rubbed circles across her back in what he hoped was a soothing manner. “I saw something terrible, Doctor.” Then she pulled away from him and shoved a piece of paper into his hand. One edge was roughly torn, clearly having been pulled out of her sketchbook in a hurry. The Doctor looked at the drawing carefully. It showed Rose falling into what looked like a dark pit. Her arms reached out, and the Doctor’s name was clearly on her lips, even as her face was filled with terror. “I’m going to fall,” Rose whispered, wrapping her arms around herself.

The Doctor knew better than to argue, since he knew by now that for whatever reason, Rose was truly capable of seeing the future in stills. This drawing instilled a fear in him that he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt before, but seeing the fear on Rose’s face, he knew that he had to be strong right now. He carefully folded the drawing and slipped it into his pocket, then pulled Rose into another hug. “Maybe you will fall, but it won’t matter, because I promise that I will catch you.”

,,,

Just in case, though, the Doctor took to always carrying around extra rope in his bigger-on-the-inside pockets.

,,,

When the portal to the void opened up, the Doctor and Rose shared a single look, both of them instantly recognizing the sight. The Doctor stared at Rose desperately, begging her to be able to hang on despite the force pulling at her. And it seemed like she was going to prove herself to be strong enough, but then a Dalek knocked her lever out of whack, and he already knew what she was planning on doing. She wouldn’t be Rose if she didn’t put the fate of the world above herself, but that didn’t mean the Doctor had to like it.

“Just wait!” he shouted as he tried to shift around enough to reach into his pocket for the rope. Unfortunately, with the amount of random junk floating around in his pocket, finding the rope wasn’t an easy task, and he watched the resignation and apology on Rose’s face as she dropped down to the lever to get it back in place. “Wait! Rose, hold on!” He finally found the rope, just as Rose was pulled towards the void, and the Doctor recognized that this moment was identical to the one she had drawn. He didn’t think he’d ever realized that her depictions were exact likenesses of the future, but there wasn’t time to think about that now. 

The Doctor quickly the rope to the clamp, and then dropped down while holding the other end, begging it to be strong enough to hold. He snatch Rose by the front of her shirt, and she immediately reached up to grab his arm, even though that must have taken a lot of strength all things considered. 

They both dangled there precariously for several long seconds, and then the portal closed and they both dropped to the floor, immediately pulling each other into a tight embrace. The Doctor was pretty sure that he was just saying Rose’s name over and over again, but she didn’t seem to mind at all. Then they both seemed to move at the same time, pressing forward into a desperate kiss, both of them needing the reassurance of the other’s presence. 

It wasn’t until they heard the sound of someone clearing their throat that they finally pulled apart, though they continued to hold hands as they got to their feet and faced the remains of Torchwood. The Doctor chastised them, though he knew that he didn’t sound as stern as he should have, because he was just feeling too overjoyed at the moment. 

The two of them returned to the TARDIS and went to the Doctor’s room, though they both fell asleep almost immediately, exhausted from the trials of the day. The Doctor didn’t think he’d ever felt so happy in his entire life.

,,,

When the Doctor woke up, he was alone, and for a moment he feared that he’d just had a dream to try and cope with the trauma of losing Rose to the void, but then the TARDIS used blinking lights to lead him to the library, where he found Rose curled up in front of the fireplace, with no fire in it, looking lost. He sat down next to her, and they were both silent for a few minutes. “Doctor, why can I see the future?”

The Doctor frowned, and he looked at Rose while she looked at the empty fireplace. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “And believe me, I hate not knowing things. I would assume that it has something to do with Bad Wolf, but, well, we may never know for sure.”

There was another minute of silence, and then Rose finally turned to look at the Doctor. He could see the tear tracks on her face, and he felt his hearts clench. Nothing in the universe had the right to make Rose Tyler cry. “What’s the point in me being able to see the future if I can never change anything?”

The Doctor reached out to take one of Rose’s hands, and she readily let him. “Oh, but Rose, you’ve already changed so much. Maybe the things you see still happen, but think of all the lives you’ve saved, including mine. Think of all the people you’ve met and taught to be better. You’ve changed so much, and you don’t even realize it.” Then he pulled her over so that they could hug, and the Doctor couldn’t help being aware of just how perfectly they fit together. Like they were always meant to be this close.

,,,

Growing up, Rose had gone through long periods where she hadn’t seen a single glimpse of the future, sometimes months on end. So she wasn’t sure how long she should wait before admitting out loud what she already suspected- that she was done seeing the future for good. 

It had been about six months for them since Canary Wharf, and the last few pictures Rose had had happened. She hadn’t had a single other vision since almost falling into the void, though. And while she hated the idea of being able to see the future but never being able to change it, she found the idea of never knowing to be scarier. Was this how it felt to be a normal person? To never know when the most important moments of her life were going to happen? 

Perhaps she was just overreacting. Before she’d met the Doctor, she had almost never seen herself, so she hadn’t known much about her own personal future anyways. But living on the TARDIS, she’d had her visions much more frequently, to the point where she stopped drawing most of them because she simply didn’t have the time (which was somewhat ironic since she lived onboard a time machine), and many of those visions did involve her directly. 

But when the seventh month passed by vision-free, Rose decided that it was time to tell the Doctor. “I know you never said it out loud, but I think sometimes you only liked me so much because you felt like I could relate to you. But I haven’t seen any of the future in months, and I think that maybe I’ll never be able to see them again. I don’t have any visions left that we haven’t seen come true. I’m just an ordinary girl now, Doctor, for real.”

There was a brief moment of silence, and then the Doctor laughed and pulled her into a hug. “Oh, Rose, there’s nothing ordinary at all about you. And I don’t just care about you because you could see the future, I promise. Rose Tyler, I- I love you.”

Rose’s eyes widened in surprise, and then she felt like she had no choice but to give the Doctor a passionate kiss. When she pulled away, she breathlessly whispered, “I love you too, Doctor.”

It wasn’t until a little while later that the Doctor got up to find his coat and rummage through it. She watched curiously, and he glanced over at her. “I guess I never moved it into this one. Hang on, I’ll be right back.” He hurried off in nothing but his pants, and Rose hoped that Martha wasn’t wandering around anywhere to get an eyeful. 

The Doctor returned a few minutes later, holding a familiar leather jacket that Rose hadn’t seen in ages. She watched as he began searching through those pockets, and then triumphantly pulled out a folded piece of lined paper. Rose furrowed her brows in confusion, until the Doctor unfolded the paper and showed it to her. “What-?”

“You still have one left that hasn’t come true. Rose, you’ve already given me everything I could possibly want, but as if that wasn’t enough, you’ve given me something else too. Hope for the future. When we first met, I was practically still fresh out of the war, and I thought things were going to be bad forever. But then I met this fascinating pink and yellow human who gave me a picture of my home and said that she could see the future. I don’t know how it could even be possible, but somehow, someday, I’m going to see Gallifrey again, and you’re the one who gave me that hope. Whether you can see the future anymore or not, you’ve already shown me all I need to know of it. And it’s okay to go forward blindly, Rose, because I’ll always be there to make sure you don’t trip. Or to catch you if you do.” He hesitated for a moment, before reaching back into the pocket of his brown jacket. “So I suppose if you can’t see the future anymore, then that means you didn’t know about this?” He pulled out a little velvet ring box, and Rose’s eyes widened as he popped it open and looked at her seriously. “I can’t imagine a better future than one with you by my side.”

Rose threw herself towards him, tackling him down onto the bed and raining kisses down on him. “Oh, my wonderful, fantastic Doctor. That does sound like an absolutely perfect future!”

,,,

When Pete proposed to Jackie, she immediately said yes, and then paused as she thought of an old drawing from many years ago. It was too bad she hadn’t had time to pack any bags before coming to this parallel world, because it meant she couldn’t re-examine the darn thing. But she remembered the basics of it- her and Pete getting married. She’d wondered for a long time what that drawing had meant, but now she understood that it really had shown the future, just like so many other works of art that had come from her daughter. 

Thinking of Rose always made Jackie’s chest ache. Of course she was glad to know that her daughter had the Doctor, who obviously loved her to pieces even if he had always been too daft to say anything about it, but that didn’t stop Jackie from missing Rose something fierce. It had already been two years since Jackie had come to this world, and she didn’t think she would ever stop missing her daughter.

So she thought she might be hallucinating when the day of her wedding arrived, and Jackie spotted a familiar blonde in the crowd. She didn’t see the Doctor, but then she noticed the way the old man next to Rose was holding her hand, and she figured that the alien must’ve changed faces again. It would make sense, since it certainly looked like it had been more than just two years for Rose. She also noticed that both Rose and the old man were wearing matching golden rings, and she couldn't help smiling fondly at the idea that the Doctor had finally manned up. 

Jackie rushed over as soon as the ceremony ended, and pulled her daughter into a tight hug. “I thought you said the walls of the universe were sealed? Not that I’m complaining, mind.”

Rose laughed, and pulled away enough to nod to the old man. “This is the Doctor, Mum. And he’s absolutely brilliant, so we figured out a way, after a lot of other stuff happened first. Knew we couldn’t miss it, not after seeing this.” She reached into her pocket to pull out a piece of paper, slightly yellowed from age, and held it out.

Jackie took the paper, and gulped when she unfolded it and saw the picture of this very wedding. And there, in the crowd, she spotted Rose and the old man Doctor. She hadn’t known that it was Rose when she’d first seen the picture, and hadn’t thought anything of two more unfamiliar faces in the crowd. 

Jackie laughed, and clutched the picture to her chest before pulling her daughter in for another hug. “Has himself been taking care of you?”

Rose grinned and nodded. “Yeah, just as much as I take care of him. What about you, Mum? Are you happy?”

Jackie hesitated to answer. “Is this the last time I’m going to see you?”

Her daughter immediately shook her head. “Travel between parallel universes is possible for us again, which means that we can come back and visit you all the time. It’ll be just like the old days, with old leather and big ears.”

The Doctor crossed his arms over his chest indignantly, but Jackie didn’t let him speak. She was too eager to catch up with her daughter. “Oh, you have to meet Pete. Er, meet him again, I suppose. He’s not exactly like your father, but he’s a good man, and I love him, and he is very sorry for pushing you away the first time you met. Come on, come on!” She pulled Rose over to her new father-in-law, eager to see them get along. 

,,, 

The first time Rose had painted the future, she’d been four years old. But it wasn’t until many years after that that she’d first known her future was going to be absolutely fantastic, whether she could see it coming or not.


End file.
